Digital Snapshot
by Eva U Wagner
New Zealand “Back on Track”?
New Zealand has held general elections on 14 October. According to the preliminary election result, the centre-right party has achieved 39% of all “ordinary” votes, (50 seats - 17 more than 2020), followed by the Labour Party with 27% (34 seats - 31 less than 2020), the Green Party with 11% (14 seats - 4 more than 2020), the ACT Party with 9% (11 seats - 1 seat more than 2020), the NZ First Party with 6.5% (8 seats - 8 more than 2020 as the party back then did not meet the 5% threshold) and the Maori Party with 2.6% (4 seats - 2 more than in the last election). The voter turnout is estimated at about 78% (compared to about 82% in 2020). Voters abroad could cast their vote since 27 September; voters in the country could cast their vote since 2 October - about 1.15 million voters made use of this option (compared to about 1.98 million in 2020 and about 1.24 million in 2017). Notably, the so called “special votes” (including overseas votes) are estimated at 567,000 (20.2% of all votes) (compared to 504,621 in the last election), with the overseas votes estimated around 80,000.
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